Coming between The Decameron and Arabian Nights in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s classic tales trilogy, this bawdy adaptation of Chaucer’s 14th-century masterpiece outraged the purists.
Pasolini celebrates almost every conceivable form of sexual act with a rich, earthy humour.
Glorying in the filth and vulgarity of medieval life and the physical and moral grotesqueness of the characters, this is a film teeming with life and insight.
Pasolini also guests as Chaucer himself, accompanying a party of pilgrims who relieve the tedium of their journey to Beckett’s shrine with a variety of tales.
Despite winning the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, though, it is often ruinously self-indulgent.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Pier Paolo Pasolini Jenkin
Tom Baker Wife of Bath
Laura Betti Cook
JP Van Dyne Pardoner
Derek Deadman Host of the Tabard
George Bethell Datch Sir January
Hugh Griffith May
Josephine Chaplin Damian
Oscar Fochetti Devil
Franco Citti
Pasolini celebrates almost every conceivable form of sexual act with a rich, earthy humour.
